I’ve been shooting with my new Sony A7S II extensively over the last couple of weeks, and recently developed a LUT that I’ve been using with all of my SLog 3 footage. While I’ve really been enjoying the A7S II, my biggest issue with it so far has been the same as my issue with all of Sony’s other cameras – the color science.

Sony is leading the way in mirrorless innovation at the moment, and I respect what they are doing tremendously. But even though they are ahead of the curve in so many ways, their color science is still far behind companies like Blackmagic Design or Canon.

That’s not to say you can’t achieve beautiful color results with Sony’s cameras, but rather that you need to work a little harder to get there. On my Blackmagic URSA for instance, if I have exposed my shot properly I am able to drop on a LUT in Resolve or FCP X and the image will look fantastic right away. With the A7S II on the other hand, I’ve never had perfect results while using Sony’s SLog 3 LUT on any clip that I’ve shot to date.

Since I will inevitably be shooting more and more with the A7S II as the months go on, I decided to create a new LUT to use in place of Sony’s standard SLog 3 LUT. The goal of course is to save myself a lot of time in the editing room/color suite, and get each shot that much closer to the final look right off the bat.

The new LUT that I created was based off of a hybrid of Sony’s SLog 3 LUT and the Arri Alexa LUT, the former of which works surprisingly well with SLog 3 footage. From there, I brought down the mids a touch, made a slight contrast adjustment, and warmed up the midtones slightly. I tend to find Sony’s mids/skintones have a tendency to look cool or at times even purple, so one of my primary goals with this LUT was to eliminate that issue.

Below are three screen shots showcasing the different SLog 3 looks:

Ungraded SLog 3 Footage

Sony SLog 3 LUT

Noam Kroll SLog 3 LUT

The difference between my LUT and Sony’s isn’t drastic, but the change is significant enough to save at least one or two steps in the color process when locking in your primary grade.

As is the case with any LUT, you will still want to fine tune your grade to get it looking perfect, but so far I have found that my new LUT helps me to reach the finish line that much faster.

Noam Kroll is an award-winning Los Angeles based filmmaker, and the founder of the boutique production house, Creative Rebellion. His work can be seen at international film festivals, on network television, and in various publications across the globe. Follow Noam on social media using the links below for more content like this!

How well do you think the slog 3 footage with your lut would mix with c100 markii footage? I’m not great with color correction and am currently using Shane Hurlbut’s c100 mark ii sic profile. I love the way it looks without much grading at all. My GH4 has always been a lot more work for me, especially with skin tones. Do you think the a7sii would be easier to get great skin tones and match the c100mark ii footage?

Great questions. I do think the Slog 3 footage would match better with the C100 footage as compared to the GH4. That said, the color science and overall look from Sony is quite different from Canon across the board (in my opinion), so you will still need to do some grading to match them. I would say that as long as you spend enough time in the color suite, you should be able to get them to intercut pretty seamlessly.

I am for sure thinking about switching from my gh4 to the a7s I I. I have never got the look I want with vlog even with a 10bit recorder and shooting inside is kinda getting hard to do. Looking forward to your review on it before making th jump.

Can you please link some videos you made with A7s II where you used your new LUT and also tell us how time consuming was to color correct them?

I’m about to invest in the A7s ii, but im quite afraid of i would only get nice colors if sit for long hours in front of PP/AE/Davinci – so im really curious if its possible to get nice image out of the camera with just putting the LUT on a correctly exposed footage

The easiest way is to use the Lumetri color panel in Premiere. In older versions of Premiere that don’t support Lumetri, you can always download a free 3rd party plugin such as mLUT from motionvfx.com – good luck!

Long time reader, often comment. Just wanted to say thanks for this. Question – when you made this LUT, what exposure were you basing this from? Normally i expose two stops over which seems to work out well.

It seems as though this is a bit different? If you could tell me that would be awesome. Would help work with this LUT for correction.

Hi Ash – Anytime, and thanks for reading! To answer your question, I believe this was used on footage that was exposed about a 1/2 stop to a stop over. Like you, I tend to expose to the right to maintain cleaner shadows. Hope this helps clear things up…

Hi Noam, why would you choose to shoot in Slog3 more than any other pic. profile? I am going to be shooting in subways and was wondering if you had a recommendation in terms of pics profile. Cine 2? Slog 3? etc. Thanks for your advice.

Hi Herve – I like Slog 3 mainly because it gives me the flattest image straight out of the camera. I don’t love the colors it generates, but with a little extra work in post (and using this LUT) I’m able to generate a nicer color palette than what it delivers natively. Hope this helps!

Hey Gabriel! Yes the LUTs will work with footage from any camera. You might still want to use an Slog3 – Rec 709 LUT to bring the contrast back into your image before applying the creative LUTs in my pack, depending on how you like to work.

With regards to Final Cut – there are many plugins available that allow you to load LUTs right inside of the software. When you purchase my LUT pack, you will receive installation instructions that will provide you with options for using LUT loaders/plugins in FCP (and other software). Hope this helps and please let me know if you have any other questions! Enjoy!

Thanks so much for the LUT. It looks fantastic! I did have a question I wanted to ask though. I’m having difficulties dealing with noise at Slog 3. I’ve tried using the Denoiser ll plugin from Red Giant, but it doesn’t seem to be cleaning up the noise as well as I would have liked. Do you have any tips on how to make the image a bit clearer? Sorry for the beginner question. It’s my first time working with Slog 3.

Any time Eric! In terms of noise in Slog 3, I would recommend shooting your footage just slightly overexposed so that you can crush it more in post. The more contrast you can add, and the darker your blacks become, the less noise you will see. That said, be sure not to overexpose too much or you may clip your highlights!

Hey Noam! Thanks so much for this LUT, I look forward to shooting with it. I am still new to the Sony world so a few questions if you don’t mind? When shooting with this LUT in S-Log three what color mode do you prefer? Do adjust any of the Black Levels or Black Gamma?

Hey Ian! Thanks for the note. I actually haven’t shot with the A7S II in a while now, so I’m not sure which color mode to recommend. That said, I never messed with the black levels/gamma at all as I’ve found doing so can degrade the image quality when recording internally. Hope this helps!

So, I just had a shoot with the A7S II and we grabbed my old A7 for b-roll…I thought the cam ops were shooting the same, but in the heat of an active set…we were shooting Slog-3 and Neutral…I’m really having a hard time grading it in Premiere…thoughts?

If the issue is matching the footage, I would aim to get one camera looking perfect first, and then match the other to it. If you go back and forth too much, it will be really hard to ever find a good match with them!

Hi Noam, is the LUT designed to ‘fix’ Sony’s colours to serve as a basis for further grading or is it designed to give the footage a particular stylistic look? By this I mean, would I be able to use this LUT and apply further grading to make it more contrasty or make certain colours pop, etc? From your screen caps it appears further grading won’t be a big issue, but I’m just seeking confirmation 🙂